On a balmy Thursday night, at the corners of Broxton and Weyburn Avenues in Westwood Village, a smattering of movie lovers bathed in yellow and blue neon lights snapped photos of a marquee.
They came to pay last respects to the Fox Bruin Theater, whose 7:30 p.m. screening of Twisters would be its last, the first time the Streamline Moderne landmark would shutter since opening its doors in 1937.
Regency Theatres, which in 2010 swooped in to save the movie house from potential extinction, opted not to renew its lease on that 670-seat theater, nor the 1,400-seat Fox Village Theater across the street.
But the Village found a savior in director Jason Reitman, who earlier this year led a consortium of 35 fellow filmmakers who banded together to purchase the property, with plans to renovate it and eventually reopen. No timeline or details have yet been announced on the project.
The Bruin, however, found no such guardian angel. Despite a loving cameo in Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — it’s where Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate takes in a showing of Tate’s 1968 film, The Wrecking Crew — the property has failed to find a new tenant and will sit vacant until one comes along.
The building is owned by the Margaret Skouras Martyn family, who are “currently evaluating future opportunities” for the theater, which along with the Village was designated a Los Angeles cultural heritage monument in 1988, sparing it from the wrecking ball.
Among the misty-eyed outside the Bruin last night was Jans Michael, 52, a Pasadena native who has been a regular since the 1970s, when his older brother attended nearby UCLA.
“In the ’80s, it was the date night spot,” recalled Michael. “The Village would be packed. It was a completely different time. This was before there were so many entertainment zones around the city. It was a madhouse here on weekends.”
The proliferation of those alternatives — and of further distractions in the form of streaming and social media — has made the theatrical business an increasingly untenable challenge, particularly for the old-fashioned movie houses that are so much part of the Los Angeles cultural landscape.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, L.A. has lost the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood (rumored to reopen in 2025) and the century-old Highland Theater in Highland Park. But streamers and filmmakers have also stepped up to save historic venues like the Vista Theatre in Los Feliz (bought by Tarantino and reopened in November) and the Egyptian Theatre (now run by Netflix).
Inside the Bruin, about 400 patrons showed up for one, final show — this one starring Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones, who wouldn’t look entirely out of place in the 1930s screwball comedies of its heyday.
Loren Blazek, 21, who sells concessions while pursuing a career in cinematography, worked diligently to fill popcorn buckets. “It’s sad,” he said, adding that he’d be holding onto his uniform because the staff is being reassigned to Regency’s Van Nuys outpost, a 16-screen megaplex. “But Van Nuys is closer to my home, so there’s that.”
“Typically, movie theaters don’t announce when they’re shutting down,” says Andrew Gualtieri, 40, district manager for Recency Theatres. “But we sent an announcement to the Los Angeles Theatres Facebook page, so we got a good crowd.” The turnout earlier in the week, Gualtieri said, was a fraction of that.
Gualtieri, who also manages the Village — where its final screening, the Scarlett Johansson-Channing Tatum picture Fly Me to the Moon, played to a much thinner audience — isn’t feeling very optimistic about the future of either theater. “It could take years,” he says of Reitman’s rumored plans for an ambitious renovation of the Village. Reitman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The audience applauded twice at the Twisters screening — once when Regency Theatres title card came up, and again at the movie’s end, despite the absence of a satisfying kiss between its two leads.
As for longtime customer Michael, the disaster flick as an OK enough way to mark the end of an era — “I can appreciate all the effects, but I thought it was a little long,” he said — but the real star of the night was the theater itself.
“We made a point of it to come out here to see the last showing,” Michael said. “And I’m glad we did.”